Sell me on Star Wars D20

[Gundark]

besides who wouldn't want to go aboard an AT-AT/imperial crusier and go about the galaxy blowing up rebel scum

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

If a non-Jedi gets affected by Fear, what happens? Do they get Force points too, or are they just hosed?

 

[humble minion]

If a non-Jedi gets affected by Fear, what happens? Do they get Force points too, or are they just hosed?

Non-Jedi get Force points too (though they can't accumulate as many as a Jedi or other Force-sensitive type). Probably the best remedy for Fear is playing a droid. You're completely immune to it that way, though on the other hand you haven't got any Force points at all, and sometimes you really need them...

 

[Gundark]

And you get to say cool things like "Wipe them out....all of them"....or "at last we'll have revenge"...or "I have a bad feeling about this"....or "I am your father"....."Why do I feel that we've picked up another pathetic lifeform".........or some sexual quotes.... "Look at the size of it!"...or "Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?"...."Get shot kid, now lets blow this thing and get out of here".... It sounds like you like Star Wars....that should be reason enough to play the game. If you like d20 then everything should be okay.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

I'd definitely agree with this - to a point. Starship combat is a real problem.

Are you using the errata that doubles DR and hull points for all ships? It may help a bit. It does have its downside though, in that you can make what should be one-shot mooks a lot tougher than they should be (especially considering how incredibly high the Defence of a small, fast ship can be, but that's a rant for another time).

Really? Errata? In the last year? From WotC?

(looks on site) Wow, you're right. Huh. Very interesting. That would've made the battle last a bit longer. I'll have to point this out to the GM.

I'd think that fighters shouldn't have their HP and DR doubled, since, well, they're fighters, and hard to hit, and have a tendency to vaporize when hit. But that's just me.

Another thing I'd like is sensors. There really should be better sensors than the universal-grade ones everyone ships out with.

another strike against the party is that (again, IME typical for a SW group) only one character has Starship Operation. he's the pilot, so the gunner lacks proficiency in starship weapons and is taking a -4 to attack rolls all the time. since this is a civilian ship, it doesn't have very good fire control systems and he's still attacking at below his BAB. couple that with the party still being low to middling levels and most starfighters have Defense scores in the mid-20s, and they are missing more often than they're hitting.

They *really* ought to have more than one person with Starship Operation. It really would be to their benefit to make someone take it; they make it easy, too, with enough classes giving bonus feats at first level. And, honestly, piloting's not the main thing you have to worry about in combat; most of the useful stunts are fairly easy, so the pilot may want to switch to gunnery, or have a gun added on and assigned to him.

Our current problem is that, well, I'm the only one who's read up on starships. While we all have the minimum 5 ranks in Pilot and Computer use, everyone looks to me to actually do the bloody astrogate, even if their characters have better modifiers. My first character was the designated pilot, but he died, and this character's a bush sniper, who's managed to morph into...a pilot. Sigh. We had two other people with SO: Transport, but one's on granny-delivery duty when we play now, and the other's just finished buying a house, which left my character, who had SO:Fighter, driving a transport. Admittedly, having the Jedi guardians man the gun turrets helps, as do the missile racks that the followers can press buttons for, and hopefully the other pilot will start showing up again.

besides who wouldn't want to go aboard an AT-AT/imperial crusier and go about the galaxy blowing up rebel scum

When we were on Hoth (sent there by an Imperial captain to "see what we could find that ISB would undoubtedly overlook"), we found an overturned AT-ST, that was otherwise intact. We buried it and came back for it later, and now, while the Jedi are off meditating, I can run around in the ultimate RV. Heh, heh.

Brad

 

[d4]

They *really* ought to have more than one person with Starship Operation.

heh. don't tell me, tell the players! as a GM i've had to tone down or cut out most of the spaceship combat because i don't want to blow the party out of the sky...

they want to rely on the NPC astromech droid to make their Astrogation checks for them. i'll grudgingly allow that, but when they ask if the droid can pilot the ship for them i sigh.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

heh. don't tell me, tell the players! as a GM i've had to tone down or cut out most of the spaceship combat because i don't want to blow the party out of the sky...

Heh. It should be fairly simple for them to find/steal a starship. Granted, they may not want to do that, but, really, shields are your friends. Alternately, they can retrofit shields on. See if you can't find Starships of the Galaxy, and then have a crated shield emitter fall into their laps. Then they just have to get a shipyard to put it on...and pay for part of the upgrade points.

Our group has...five starships. We've got our gunboat (the Lu Bu, which we started with and I designed), our stealthy shuttle (stolen from the droid-dude Stavros from Coruscant and the Core Worlds), the transport from the Tempest Feud adventure, a Republic cruiser (currently owned by one player and leased out to a passenger liner corp), and a Lambda-class shuttle (not sure where that came from).

they want to rely on the NPC astromech droid to make their Astrogation checks for them. i'll grudgingly allow that, but when they ask if the droid can pilot the ship for them i sigh.

Oh, our DM makes us roll our own, even if the Jedi Force Warrior's droid has a huge Astrogate score. Sigh. It's that whole "People do the hard stuff, droids assist" philosophy.

Brad

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Non-Jedi get Force points too (though they can't accumulate as many as a Jedi or other Force-sensitive type). Probably the best remedy for Fear is playing a droid. You're completely immune to it that way, though on the other hand you haven't got any Force points at all, and sometimes you really need them...

Sounds like 3.0 psionic combat I only hope NPC classes, like stormtroopers, actually get FP. I guess they don't. And it works even better against Sith too, so very odd.

Anyway, I got a brief look at the rules and they look pretty good and balanced. But Fear looks plain broken.

 

[SSquirrel]

Oh, our DM makes us roll our own, even if the Jedi Force Warrior's droid has a huge Astrogate score. Sigh. It's that whole "People do the hard stuff, droids assist" philosophy.

Bwah? I mean look at anyone in an X-Wing. The only astrogation computer on board those things IS the R2 unit. AN R2 unit doing itall for you is fine...so long as your R2 is still operational heh. I know several GMs that would make sure your R2 got screwed with so you would have to rely on your own crappy Astrogation scores.

That IS how the droid assists really. Smack your GM once heh.

Hagen

 

[DralonXitz]

In my game, we've been in...five combats that involved starships, and one that involved a hovertruck being parked on a Hutt's head.

Our primary ship is a Small transport which is fairly heavily armed, being that we're bounty hunters roaming the Outer Rim. It was initially designed with two turreted quadlasers, 2 concussion missile launchers, and 6 fire-linked ion cannon. Now, it's been refitted with a Medium turbolaser forward, two turreted double turbolasers, 4 concussion missile launchers, and a turreted heavy ion cannon. So, my experience may be a bit...abnormal.

1) One of the soldiers took a turret and blew a shuttle out of the sky...said shuttle was doing Bad Things to the ship we were on, but he hit it a bit harder than he intended.

2) Run across a pirate ambush jumping in-system. We get initiative and hit first, they hit back, and then we full attack and rip their ship into tinfoil.

3) We get shot at by a CorpSec IRD going onto a planet. It bounces off the shields, and we land.

4) My character disables a Nebulon-IV frigate over Hoth with the turreted Ion gun; GM gave it stats as a heavy turbolaser, and I had the target to -5 Hull Points in two shots. I didn't brew it up since I felt kind of bad for blowing them all to heck without warning.

5) Last session, we were shadowing this freighter our Imperial contact asked us to keep an eye on, since he'd gotten word of a pirate ambush. Pirates appear in what appears to be an overwhelming display of force, about 50 Z-95s, which were awfully tough (DM-redesigned as part of the plot). "Freighter" starts spitting out TIEs of various types, and eventually situation stabilizes while we watch, mostly due to a 20-strong wing of TIE-Advances. Until the pirate's main ship appears, which is a Corellian Corvette with massive modifications (like, a HUGE sensor mask). It lays into the transport with a lot more firepower than normal until it has the transport streaming atmosphere, and then starts on the TIE Advances. We light up, and start a gun pass into its rear arc, not quite making it through the shields. One of its turrets engages us, and not only punches through our shields, but drives us into battle damage. At this point, the TIE Advances focus their firepower into the Corvette, knocking down its shields and damaging it a bit. Knowing that we've got this one chance, we pour all our fire into the Corvette, and are able to brew it up.

Now, lessons aren't necessarily applicable, but the main thing I've noticed is that most ships are fairly fragile, compared to the damage a reasonably-designed warship can put out. We haven't done that much maneuvering, preferring to end the combat quickly if we can do so; most of that maneuvering in the two actual ship-to-ship engagements was done to make sure the gunners could get good shots and/or place us outside of the enemy's main guns.

Brad

Killer fighting bro, youve got a good GM. I myself am a GM, my players have grown to love ground vehicles and their combat, but hate Ships. A Few things I threw at them:

1. While they were flying their Modified YT-1350(they spent a fortune making it a no armor speed demon, custom made) they flew into Imperial controlled space, and one of my players, (Gunner) started firing like an idiot at a Star Destroyer, they were annihilated in around 3 seconds.

2. Second campaign, they took up the Bounty Hunter Path. Another YT-1350, this time with some pretty impressive weaponry systems was their choice ship. Turns out they and Boba Fett are after the same contract, an Imperial Officer leaking Dark Trooper info to the Rebels, Slave I wiped them apart.

But they rather enjoy our Vehicle Combat, best scenario was a 30 minute long Kamanogo Twin ZX Speederbike Chase, with 10 Imperial Speederbike troops trailing them. The 4 players split apart and started flanking and mixing up the Imperials(our custom Bikes I made them have Heavy Repeater Rifles Mounted to the Front thanks to a Deutronium fork). We only lost one Bike, driver survived, broke a leg.

Overall, I think Vehicles and Starships are quite brilliantly done.